Movie about Cooking blogs--not cool

August 22, 2009

Well, I almost had a heart attack because I thought that I had the wrong departure date in my head. I won’t go into explaining it, but I almost went into panic mode. Whoooh, everything is fine.

I went to see “Julie and Julia” tonight at the movies with my mom and sister. This is a film that chronicles the relationship between Julia Child, the famous American TV cooking chef of French cuisine, and a girl who decides to blog about her year long adventure cooking her way through Julia Child’s cookbook. It is a film that correlates their lives and their shared discovery of joy and purpose through their love of cooking. I enjoyed the movie, and I thought that they did a nice job flipping between their different life stories. As always, Merill Streep did a fantastic job, and she is said to have accurately portrayed the exuberant and buoyant personality of the loved cook. However, I have to say that I was annoyed by the facility with which it seemed both main characters found their life’s contentment.

During the movie, I realized that I felt like the girl, Julia, incapable of finishing ideas, lost, with a seemingly non-directional lifestyle. I began making parallels of our lives, and I kept seeing myself in my current situation just like Julie: a talented woman, stuck in the mud, waiting to bust something out, anything! I sometimes doubt my talents because my resume sounds so pathetic, as if I had no skills.

As I continued watching the movie, I realized that both women had found incredible companions, and it was upsetting to think of this constant vacancy in my life. Despite the trials that these women faced, they had at least found someone important, supportive, and special with whom to spend their lives. It is a blessing and great accomplishment to say that you have a loving relationship that inspires you; therefore, despite their soul searching, in my book they were already very fortunate people. Counting my one exception, I have not found a meaningful relationship for a long time.

I feel lost and I admitted to my mom that my self-esteem was very low at times. I really have nothing to show for myself, for my ideas, or for my talents. I can’t help but feeling very wasteful and lost, completely lost. The sad part is that I have so many ideas to sort out that it feels as though I’m trying to grasp blindly at flying strings! Maybe it is due to the many varied stimuli swirling around me . My mom responded saying that my self-esteem should come from within and not from what I am visibly accomplishing in life. The irony of it all is that I directly contradicted myself from a comment I made earlier that night --about how young kids today are pushed so much by society that they end up basing their goals solely upon other standards and upon the barrages of accolades that they receive. In any case, I learned a big lesson tonight. It seems so easy, to base your happiness solely on the person that you know you are inside and how you live, instead of the visual progress of your “life track.” With self-contentment and confidence should come personal fulfillment.

Dear Cara, don’t worry that you are “failing” in the real world or about your “skill set”—you are a good person! Haha.